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Comments Posted By Kiba

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A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose … Cognitive Dissonance, Much?

Yep, they are branding democracy as socialism, which bodes ill for democracy in this country.

» Posted By Kiba On April 5, 2010 @ 12:40 am

The Republicans have been very successful in shifting the Overton Window way to the right. This country needs a powerful voice on the left to shift it back to the objective center — or even better, left of that.

» Posted By Kiba On April 5, 2010 @ 12:17 am

I supported Kucinich until he dropped out because he’s closer to me on the political spectrum. MUCH closer. When I do so, I criticize this administration because it is too conservative. I criticize any Third Way/New Democrat for the same reason. It don’t care one whit about the color of their skin. I criticize the war in Afghanistan because it’s wrong. I criticize burdening the taxpayers with bailing out Wall Street fat cats for their crimes because it’s wrong. I criticize failing to regulate those fat cats and break up their monopolized power structures because it’s wrong. I criticize the lack of a public option in health care and handing the insurance companies a huge windfall because it’s wrong. I criticize Obama’s support of FISA because it’s wrong. I criticize Obama’s appointment of nothing but Rubinites to his economic team — the very people who created the economic debacle — because it is wrong.

I criticize the policy. My criticism would be the same no matter who is in office. Indeed, it was the same when Clinton was in office. Obama is clearly very intelligent and very capable, but also way too conservative for me.

I tend to view politics not from an American perspective, but a larger one that includes Europe and Asia. Kucinich is perceived in America as a far left liberal, but in the international context he’s simply a mainstream social democrat. Hillary is seen as very liberal in America, but in the view of the rest of the world she’s a conservative.

The Democratic party has shifted way to the right in the last few decades. The same problem exists in England, where New Labour is more conservative in policy than the pre-Thatcher Conservative Party.

A major problem that I see in America is that the two parties we have left are the Batshit Insane Conservative Party and the Slightly Moderate Conservative Party.

» Posted By Kiba On April 4, 2010 @ 11:47 pm

How Long Is a Piece of String?

Repression of a fundamental drive like sexuality is absolutely going to create a dysfunctional reaction.

» Posted By Kiba On April 5, 2010 @ 12:26 am

Menagerie Mystery Tour

Hey you, Whitehouse! Haha, charade you are.

Great rip on the Puritanical social conservatives, personified in Britain by Mary Whitehouse.

» Posted By Kiba On March 20, 2010 @ 9:26 am

Hey! Good to see you, KQ!

» Posted By Kiba On March 20, 2010 @ 9:19 am

Elementary penguins singing Hari Krishna
Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe.

Oddly enough I just listened to that song a couple days ago for the first time in ages. A friend had taken a “Which Alice in Wonderland Character Are You” quiz on Facebook, and posted the results. I replied, “I am the Walrus, goo goo g’joob.”

» Posted By Kiba On March 20, 2010 @ 8:04 am

I Think, Therefore I’m Nuts!

Thank you! I think it’s only appropriate that I make my debut on a thread that is titled “I Think, Therefore I’m Nuts.”

» Posted By Kiba On March 17, 2010 @ 1:51 am

What I find fascinating is the discovery of Ardipithecus. It was taken for granted that our ancestors had to start walking upright when environmental changes turned their habitat into savannah. It makes sense: environmental change is so often the impetus for evolutionary change, and those primates who could see over the tall grass had a distinct advantage. We find lots of evidence for the earliest upright walking hominids coinciding with the change to grassland and it seems like an open and shut case. Then along comes Ardipithecus walking around upright in the forest a million years earlier and our assumptions are completely blown away. It

» Posted By Kiba On March 17, 2010 @ 1:38 am

Hi hi! Good to see you! I was wondering where everyone was, then I thought, “Hey! I am Lain! I can find anything or anyone if they are online!”

I agree that sexual selection isn’t the sole driver for intelligence, though it undoubtedly played a role. I think environmental and dietary factors, as well as simple biological ones, were more important.

» Posted By Kiba On March 17, 2010 @ 1:15 am

Sexual selection did contribute greatly to the development of our modern form (as with all species), but creativity was a very late development. The homo sapiens physical form was around for a long, long time before the development of creativity and high intelligence. That only happened about about 50kyrs ago.

We know of an isolated population developing an increase in brain plasticity, and hence intelligence (as well as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological conditions related to plasticity). The same event was responsible for modern intelligence and creativity.

» Posted By Kiba On March 17, 2010 @ 12:49 am

Because not every species follows the same path. In fact, there is no path. There is no plan. Nature just throws everything out there. What works, survives; what doesn’t, disappears.

High intelligence is not the aim of evolution. Life just adapts to niches. The aim is simply survival. And even at that, it mostly doesn’t work out — the extinction rate is 99%. High intelligence is just an adaptation that happened to find favorable conditions in primates.

» Posted By Kiba On March 17, 2010 @ 12:35 am

The Real Battle for Financial Regulatory Reform Begins

Volkner is horrid, no doubt, but Little Timmy Geithner and the IMF is viewed as a pariah in Asia, and for good reason. During the Asian crisis, he caused a disaster. He applied a current account solution to a capital account crisis.

Because of this, Asia will have nothing to do with the IMF and China has very wisely decided to build a 2 trillion dollar foreign reserve.

» Posted By Kiba On March 17, 2010 @ 2:07 am

Morning Blog-7-3-10

Oxtail! I was just talking to my wife about oxtail. I’m not sure why.

Oh! I remember. We were watching the Travel Channel and Andrew Zimmern was eating donkey tail in China. I remember saying, “I’m glad they identified that. I wasn’t sure what part of the donkey she was flopping around there.”

» Posted By Kiba On March 20, 2010 @ 8:11 am

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